A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE Conservative Party, I gather, is in search of a name. So, at least, a resolution to be submitted to the coming Party Confer- ence indicates. And on the whole it is not surprising. None of the three names at present current—Conservative, Unionist, Tory—is much of an asset. Tory is really as outmoded as its antithesis Whig, in spite of Disraeli and Mr. Quintin Hogg. Unionist has been meaningless since the Union with Ireland, which it signalised, came to an end. And Conservative undeniably suggests something static at a time when the whole spirit of the times and the country and, to do it justice, the party, demands progress. It is all very well to conserve ; nothing is more necessary ; but to adapt and innovate is equally essential, and a name which emphasises only the first is p:ainly a liability. What, then, are the Conservatives to do? One thing they most decidedly ought not to do—though I see it hinted that they may—is to dub their party National. The noun and the adjective are in flagrant contradiction, and it would be as great an outrage to associate them as to annex the Union Jack as a party emblem. Failing some new label, perhaps, after all Tory is as good as anything. Most people forget the derisive element in its origin, and if there is little positive to be said for it., there is less on the whole to be said against it.
When wrote last week of Sir Zafrullah Khan's suggestion that the British Government should undertake to implementany agreed settlement of the Indian question reached -by Indians within a year after the end of the war, and, failing such an agreement, should carry through a plan of its own, with the proviso that any such plan could subsequently be changed if Indian agreement on an alternative should be reached, I made some reservation regarding he third pro- posal, on the ground that you could not keep on changing constitu- tions. On that, however, Sir Zafrullah points out that what he sug- gested was that the British Government should, if need be, frame a plan of its own "designed to place India on a footing of complete equality with the Dominions," and that if India did enjoy such a status she would ipso facto be free to amend her constitution at any time. That might still involve a double change, but it would certainly be by normal means. I am glad to see that Sir Frederick Whyte has called public attention to the importance of Sir Zafrullah's proposal.
* * In my next boolc of sermons (which will also be my first, and will never be written) I shall include one on a text supplied by Lerd Halifax in a speech in America on Monday, on the folly, not to say the criminality, of imputing motives without any justification in fact. In international affairs the habit is disastrous. Some of the worst examples of it have emanated from the mouths or pens of British and American critics of British policy in Greece, most of them based on the principle, so popular in those quarters, of believing the worst of someone else till you are reluctantly compelled to admit there is no basis for it. But as between Britain and America, Britain and Russia, Russia and America, and so on through all the permutations which the addition of a larger number of Allies to the list involves, the principle of believing the best till you know the worst represents the elementary dictates of reason and loyalty. That need not, of course, be carried to the length of .blind credulity. Between credulity and scepticism there is an Aristotelian mean— on which another sermon could be written, but never will.
A few hours after writing the last paragraph I was reading the ad- mirable inaugural address recently delivered by Dr. E. L. Woodward as Professor of International Relations at Oxford. In discussing com- prehensively what field the study of international relations should cover, how the subject should be taught and what place it should hold in the University firmamerit, Professor Woodward observes, "Finally, a scholar engaging in political controversy will remember one of the rules which applies • to the writing of history: that it is wise, in dealing with motives, always to give a man the benefit of the doubt, and to assume, unless the evidence to the contrary is wholly convincing, that the intentions of others are not -less honest than one's own." Surely a most admirable rule—and not only for historians.
One sentence in the interview General Eisenhower gave to the Press on Saturday deserves special attention. The Russians, said the Commander-in-Chief on the Western Front, had always given him all the information he needed on military affairs That state- ment, it is true, is rather surprisingly comprehensive ; the " always," I should have thought, needed some qualification. But all that matters at present is whether the Russians are giving the Western Allies full information about their plans and methods now. And there is no doubt whatever that they are. I have that from a source which makes it impossible to retain any doubts on the matter at all. There can be complete confidence that from now on the attacks on Germany from the west and from the east will be developed as two parts of the same machine.
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Attention should be drawn honoris causa to a young gentleman of whom the world may count on hearing more, Master Peter Thompson McClintock, a pupil at the preparatory school near Exeter where a fire, involving four fatalities, took place last month. Young McClintock, who was aged eleven and had been at the school just four days when the fire occurred, jumped from a roof on to, some mattresses in his pyjamas. He then set off to call the fire-brigade. No one told him to go (so he stated at the inquest on Monday), he just thought it would be a good idea. It was blowing a gale and snowing hard, but even in pyjamas he kept warm n by running (vires acquisit eundo). The first house he stopped at had no telephone, so he went on to the next building he saw. That turned out to be the fire-station, so his work was done. And so well done that the doer deserves some recognition here, if he gets it nowhere else.
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The Ministry of Town and Country Planning may or not be capable of planning ; on that I express no opinion. But it is first- - class at arranging little shows of photographs in its front hall at 32 St. James's Square. There is one going now which I strongly recommend anyone passing that way to look at. There are not many photographs—not more, I suppose, than about forty, some on the ground floor and some on the first, but they are as fine photographs as I have ever seen anywhere. They are sent by the National Film Board of Canada, by the good offices of Mr. John Grierson, and they depict scenes during the construction of the Alcen Highway, from the United States to Alaska. Why they are there I am not quite sure. I imagine they represent the kind of planning Mr. W. S. Morrison wOuld be at if he cola. In the
Canadian case they did get it done. Amis.
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